The Wings of Morning Read Online Free PDF

wonder than she heard Trillium’s smart step in the drive and the sound of buggy wheels. Luke and Papa had returned and she could hear them talking to the horse and to Ruth. Then she heard her mother’s voice. She hurried with her milking of the second to the last cow. Just then Papa appeared in the barn doorway.
    “Lyyndy?”
    “Yes, Papa.”
    She looked up. He was smiling at her.
    “Come, have some fresh buttermilk. We will talk in the kitchen.”
    “I just have Bella here to finish and then Trinket.”
    “All right. Join us when you are done. Are the children still in here?”
    “No, they finished about ten minutes ago. I think they went to check on the robin’s nest by the stable.”
    Her father lingered in the doorway. He removed his straw hat and held it in his hands, turning it. “My girl. You know I have a temper. May God forgive me. I know that Jude Whetstone is not a wicked boy. He is just young and full of dreams.”
    Surprised, Lyyndaya watched as her father sat down on a milking stool nearby.
    “I build up steam like a locomotive,” he went on. “It drives me forward too quickly. Then I am out of steam and I sit on my tracks and I go nowhere. I think what it is for me, when it comes to Jude, is that I once thought as he does now. Oh, yes. When I heard that the Wright brothers had made a plane back in 1903 I knew the whole thing would get much bigger. And I myself wished to soar among the hawks. But there was the question of whether to join the Amish faith or not. I was certain then, just as I am certain now, that the Amish will not permit their people to fly the planes. They are still considering the matter, but that is what they will come to in the end. So I turned my back on my dreams of flying so that we could be a good Amish family. I suppose that’s what irritates me about Jude, my girl. He is living what I forsook for the gospel’s sake and I resent it. God forgive me, I resent it.”
    He stood up and put his hat back on his head. “He is not a bad boy. Forgive me for treating him as such. But he has no future with the Amish people if he continues to fly. He is not a man who can ever be a husband for you.” His face was sad as he walked out of the barn.
    Lyyndaya rushed through milking Bella and Trinket, emptied her pail, then half ran to the house, taking her apron off her dress as she did so and wiping her hands on it. The kitchen table was crowded and noisy, Daniel and Harley half-shouting about the robins and Sarah scowling and arguing with them, disagreeing about everything they said. Ruth sat beside Mama and had been talking to her when Lyyndaya came in, but then she abruptly stopped. Papa and Luke were speaking about mowing the second hay field in a week if it did not rain. Ruth beckoned with her hand and Lyyndaya took the empty seat by her sister. A glass of cool buttermilk was waiting for her.
    She sat and sipped the fresh buttermilk and tried to decipher her sister’s mood. Ruth’s blue eyes, framed by her oval face and raven black hair, flashed with annoyance as she told Sarah to calm down. Then she asked Lyyndaya how the cows had been, especially Vivianne, and her blue eyes softened. She patted Lyyndaya’s arm gently.
    “All right, good,” Papa finally said. “Everyone outside. Luke, we will go to our third hay field after I am finished in here. Please get the horse ready. We’ll take the gelding.”
    Luke quickly got up from the table and took his glass to the sink. “Yes, Papa.”
    The kitchen soon emptied, leaving Ruth and Lyyndaya and their parents. Papa did not waste any time. He lifted his thick eyebrows at Ruth.
    “So, my girl, what did we find out?”
    “I said hello to Jude at the station,” Ruth replied, “and told him I had a letter to give him. He asked where Lyyndaya was, and I told him the letter was from her and that it would explain. That worried him a little, I could see, but he had no time to think about it for so many wanted to talk to